There are some mornings you just think you should go back to be and start the day over. This morning is one of those mornings. No Mitt Romney, today is not a good day for America.

Mitt Romney just picked his running mate. Actually social media leaked it out a few hours ago, while mainstream media is hawking it as breaking news.

It's not breaking news, it's bad news. Mitt Romney has chosen his running mate and he might as well have chosen Sarah Palin. He has chosen Congressman Paul Ryan.

It is official, the politics of extremism will be running the elections in the U.S. this November. Sign me one frustrated Republican. Romney, like Obama, panders to small factions, pockets of extremism. Like Obama, he does not speak to the average, nor majority of Americans.

The majority of Americans are in the middle, they try to belong to a political party and are trying to desperately believe in anything and anyone, yet both political parties worship at the extreme sides of their respective parties, leaving little in reality for the Average American to grasp or hold onto. Let alone believe in. Is the United States becoming a rudderless political ship steered by warring extremist political factions?

This choice by Romney makes me like a woman without a country. There is NO place in this election for voters in the middle of either party. And Paul Ryan certainly won't respect my right to choose as a woman. And I am not saying what my choices are incidentally, only a Romney-Ryan ticket might as well have me proverbially speaking being barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. And silent.

Obama has done nothing for me, and truthfully what has Obama done for the majority of Americans? The answer is nothing. He has been four long years of BTLA - big talk little action. He's good at talking, but while he is fiscally fine, can you say that for the majority of people in this country? What is so fabulous about what he has done with healthcare? Has he reformed the actual healthcare companies? Look at bibles of wasted money like the largely uninterpreted Dodd-Frank Act? Has there been sensible Wall Street reform with rules people can actually follow? Or has it merely given the Securities and Exchange Commission a bigger bully stick that comes complete with selective enforcement versus creating a better system through rule making that can actually work and not just grow their workforce?

Our country is an economic cesspool and the problems that existed four years ago, still exist today, only worse. We might as well be in a depression.

Romney unfortunately is in that class of super rich who are out of touch with reality. And his running mate is too extreme. Ryan's policies are too extreme and would punish everyone in this country except the infamous top 2%.

So where does that leave the rest of us? We are not better off. If anything, the Average American is more pissed off.

Romney's Palin for Decision 2012 (Paul Ryan) may just hand the election back to Obama. So I guess we had all better hope Obama can actually do something to benefit all not just select factions the next four years, hadn't we?

I am so tired of the politics of extremism in this country, that I truly might not vote this November. I have never said that, never done that. I was going to volunteer at my new poll. Why bother?

Sign me disgusted by American politics, and if Romney had chosen more wisely and chosen someone like Tim Pawlenty this might be a very different blog post.

But what do I know from American politics? I am not of a religion that believes in magic underwear, after all.

"Mitt's choice for VP is Paul Ryan. Spread the word about America's comeback team," a Romney campaign mobile phone application said, confirming widespread reports he had selected the 42-year-old Wisconsin lawmaker who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee.....

Conservative leaders, increasingly anxious over the state of Romney's campaign, had urged him to pass over reliable - but not particularly inspiring - figures such as Ohio Senator Rob Portman and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, and instead go for Ryan.

The Wisconsin congressman is a favorite of the conservative Tea Party, an anti-tax, limited-government movement that helped Republicans take over the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.

But Ryan's selection immediately draws attention to a budget plan he proposed as House budget chairman that would include controversial cuts in government health programs for the elderly and poor.....

By choosing Ryan, Romney effectively adopts the Ryan budget, which includes proposed cuts to Medicare, the healthcare program for the elderly, long considered to be politically taboo.

Ryan would set up a voucher-like system for the program to help beneficiaries buy private health insurance or give them access to the traditional fee-for-service plan.

Another controversial portion of Ryan's budget is a plan to reduce the cost of Medicaid, the federally backed healthcare plan for the poor, by turning it into a block grant program for states.

Several Democrats have said that among the potential running mates for Romney, Ryan was the one they would most like to face because of his budget proposals.

And d'oh Romney just did his speech and goofed - he just asked people to welcome the next "President" of the United States and then had to correct himself. Well every campaign needs a Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle. Ironically, Obama did the same thing when introducing Biden.

As you may have noticed, I’ve largely avoided speculating about Mitt Romney’s choice of a running mate. That’s partly because I don’t have any inside information and partly because of something I learned back in 1988, when I was a young whippersnapper covering the Presidential election for the Sunday Times of London. At the Republican convention, in New Orleans, Vice-President George H. W. Bush stunned almost everybody by picking Dan Quayle, a young senator from Indiana, as his running mate.

After a string of gaffes on Quayle’s part, following questions being raised about his résumé and lack of experience, the Bush campaign sent in the heavies to shore him up: James Baker and Roger Ailes....Quayle was irrelevant....In 2008, Sarah Palin reprised the role of clueless running mate, providing the press corps with even more entertainment than Quayle had done twenty years earlier. But Palin, like Quayle, didn’t have much, if any, impact on the result. By the middle of August, before John McCain announced his choice of Veep candidate, Barack Obama was already holding a steady lead in the polls, which he never relinquished....

Now there’s another veepstakes, with speculation that an announcement of the candidate’s name could come as early as today. Rather than trying to make predictions, it may be more productive to assess what Romney’s choice might mean.....But my hopes would be tempered by the memory of Quayle, Palin, and all the other Veep candidates who garnered acres of newsprint and didn’t count for much on Election Day. In fact, here’s a challenge: Can anybody think of a running mate who made a substantial difference?

I am not a Tea Partier and I am not a Democrat. There is no place for me in this election as a voter. It also makes me wonder where there is a place for average Americans in American politics at all. Paul Ryan is not a choice. He's more political extremism.

The politics of extremism will ruin this country if we are not careful.

Comment viewing options

Honestly, Obama and Romney both cater to the middle - and their internal polls point them in that direction. That's why most of their positions are so similar. It then becomes a cult of personality on who is elected.

I personally don't like Ryan at all and I don't agree with how he wants to "fix" the economy - as if any politician can do that.

However, one fact about Ryan is not extreme at all in our political culture.

His case for balancing the budget does not cut really anything (I'd like to see entire federal departments go) and his goal is to balance the budget in about 30 years.

All Ryan's plan does is slow the rate of debt growth down, but even under his "extreme" plan we will still have $4 trillion more in a debt in 10 years. Yeah, that's better than our current pace of $1 trillion in new debt a year, but I don't like that Ryan cuts social programs while adding to military spending.

There needs to be a better priority. It's like Corbett cutting education while giving corporations breaks on taxes.

Ideally I'd like government out of most of this, but since things are so entrenched and ingrained, I feel there needs to be proper priorities to wean off Big Government, and Ryan ends up being a typical Big Government neocon in my view as he still grows the overall debt while massively increasing military spending that is already out of control.

Ryan was picked to appeal to Tea Party types, neocons, and left-over Bush supporters.

I refuse to vote for Obama or Romney - and regardless of who they choose for VP. I am also not surprised at Romney trying to appeal to the so-called right as there is still a big base in the GOP that thinks it is for small government, but only in certain areas that really annoy Democrats - and me.

All content on this site is considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License. Blog entries, forum posts, and comments are Copyright by their individual owners and are not endorsed by SAC, its Officers, Directors, or members.